1) Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to a mobile unit for measuring running paths for handling device, to a system and to the related process for measuring the running paths through such mobile unit.
2) Background Art
An industrial problem dealing with handling device in general, and bridge cranes in particular, is given by geometric positioning errors of the rails during their laying or caused by the premature wear of rolling members, with consequent impossibility of accessing to plants, production stops, high maintenance times and costs.
A solution to this problem is given by a preventive measuring of the running paths in terms of parallelism, levelling and co-planarity and of the location of possible corrective actions adapted to re-establish the optimum conditions of the geometric attitude of the running paths.
The parallelism or gauge measures must be repeated for the whole length of the running paths, through a total station adapted to measure distances and angles comprising at least one laser distance-meter or a laser railer and a target.
The levelling measures, through a graduate rod and a theodolite, must be repeated for the whole length of the running paths.
This type of measures, however, implies cumbersome, manual, scarcely accurate procedures, with high associated times and costs.
WO-2011058212-A1 discloses a measuring system comprising a fixed measuring unit, a data processing unit and a mobile unit. The mobile unit comprises a plane base, a reflector, an elevation element fastened to the base and to the reflector, means adapted to move the base along a surface so that the space orientation of the base an substantially correspond with the space orientation of the part below the surface. Moreover, the mobile unit comprises measuring device adapted to determine an angular deviation between the space orientation of the base and a plane perpendicular to the gravity force and means adapted to remove the deviation effect once having determined it.
WO-2011058212-A1 however is limited to mention the problem of synchronizing different measures performed by the data acquiring system.
Moreover, in the system disclosed in WO-2011058212-A1, the reflector of the mobile unit is fixed with respect to the base of the mobile unit itself, being visible to the fixed measuring unit only for small angles.